old G5 and Leopard compatibility question

[Annie Twotoes]

Hi,

I have an old dual processor G5 power mac. A few years ago I tried to upgrade to OSX Leopard and after a month or so my system slowly started to go wrong, first problems with emails and safari, and then other miscellaneous issues and finally it completely crashed. I cleared the hard drive, reinstalled everything, and the same thing happened.

I got a local Mac service chap out to look at it and he tried a few things that didn't work and said that there were issues of compatibility with Leopard and the the old non-intel processors and recommended reinstalling Tiger. Which I did and have stuck with it since then with no problems.

But now I am starting to find that I can't buy new software for 10.4 so I was wondering if anyone knows about this compatibility issue and knows whether Mac ever eventually sorted it out with updates etc. I still have Leopard in my draw but have never dared to try to install it again. I am told that Leopard is the last operating system that i can use with the non-intel processors so aside from buying a new computer - which I can't afford - retrying Leopard is probably my only option but I don't want to risk it if there is a chance it will kill my computer again.

If anyone knows anything about this I'd be really grateful.

 

[chmilar]

I have a Dual 2.0GHz G5, from the first G5 models that Apple released.

When Leopard first came out, I installed it immediately on the G5, and never experienced any problems with it.

I would venture that the local service guy just gave up on trying to fix the computer, and made up the excuse that Leopard has problems.

It is more likely that there is some hardware problem with the computer.

One thing to consider is that the hard drive is old enough to be flaky. If you have another hard drive handy, you could try swapping the drives, and then reinstalling.

A program like TechTool Pro can run a number of hardware tests, and might detect a hardware problem.

 

[Annie Twotoes]

Hi - thanks for replying.

The hard drive was only about 3 months old at the time that I had the problems but I did do the hardware tests and they didn't detect anything. The mac service chap spent about 4 hours at my house so I really don't think he was being lazy - he only charged me for an hour because he hadn't been able to 'fix' it. This all happened about three years ago so I really don't think it was a hardware problem.

I was wondering if it might have been a compatibility issue with particular software that then caused other things to go wrong. I know Leopard and Final Cut software had some problems when Leopard was first released and I use Final Cut and some other fairly obscure animation software that most people probably wouldn't be using. I haven't found anyone who experienced problems outside of using Final Cut though.

I haven't found anyone one else that has had this problem so I know its not a common one, but it was definitely linked to Leopard not the hard drive as it happened not just once but twice and was fine with Tiger. BTW before this happened I had the version of OSX before Tiger, which was also fine. I installed Tiger after the computer seized up the second time.

 

[Annie Twotoes]

I forgot to say - I have two hard drives and I did try swapping them - that was the second time everything died.

 

[raysfan81]

Did you archive and install (like an upgrade but data is preserved) or do a fresh install? There shouldn't be any problems with running a G5 with leopard.

 

[Pachang]

Hi,

I have an old dual processor G5 power mac. A few years ago I tried to upgrade to OSX Leopard and after a month or so my system slowly started to go wrong, first problems with emails and safari, and then other miscellaneous issues and finally it completely crashed. I cleared the hard drive, reinstalled everything, and the same thing happened.

I got a local Mac service chap out to look at it and he tried a few things that didn't work and said that there were issues of compatibility with Leopard and the the old non-intel processors and recommended reinstalling Tiger. Which I did and have stuck with it since then with no problems.

But now I am starting to find that I can't buy new software for 10.4 so I was wondering if anyone knows about this compatibility issue and knows whether Mac ever eventually sorted it out with updates etc. I still have Leopard in my draw but have never dared to try to install it again. I am told that Leopard is the last operating system that i can use with the non-intel processors so aside from buying a new computer - which I can't afford - retrying Leopard is probably my only option but I don't want to risk it if there is a chance it will kill my computer again.

If anyone knows anything about this I'd be really grateful.

I can only tell you about my experience with leopard on my quad G5. In some ways leopard was better but I prefer tiger. Leopard was quite buggy for me as well, although I didn't have all the problems you seem to be having.

My advice: Try installing leopard again (maybe on a separate drive/partition). Before doing anything you should update to 10.5.8. You shouldn't have all the problems you were having.

 

[California]

Don't know what you guys are talking about.

I owned just about every G5 tower out there.

1.8. Dp
2.0 DP
2.5 DP
2.7 DP
2.0 DC
2.3 DC
Quad DC

And NONE of them had problems on Leopard. I will say G5s are very finnicky when it comes to failing hard drives. Make sure you always have the new Hard drives in your G5s.

And lots of ram.

 

[Ryy]

^ Exactly what I'm saying too. I have not had one issue w/ Leopard on my G5, Power Mac.

There has to be something else going on.

I remember back when I had the first mini, I had issues similar to what you are referring to. I thought it was the hd, and turned out to be the ram.

Try running the startup disk, and should still have that hardware utility to see if there is something else going on.

Best of luck.